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As I’ve been thinking more and more about leading a missional community through Revolution Church Sacramento next year, I’ve also had thoughts about video preaching as part of what we do. Coinciding with these thoughts was a blog post by Perry Noble that reinforced his position that video teaching honors God and connects with people.

When we did our first month of preview services to share our vision with the members of our mother church, it was video preaching for 3 weeks, with me preaching 1 week. We participated in the One Prayer with LifeChurch.tv which many of you know about already. I was so totally blown away by the quality of the preaching from Perry Noble and Steven Furtick that I was hooked. I mean, I think I can be a pretty funny guy, but usually I evoke a laugh or two during a message while Noble just raised the roof and kept it up the whole 30 minutes. The guy seems like he isn’t even trying, yet he causes us to fire on several emotions in just one message. All this and he wasn’t even in the building! How can a guy in South Carolina talking about eating big, buttery biscuits and people believing or not believing in the power of Christ connect so well with us here in California? I don’t know how or why, but I just know what I saw and how people responded and it was amazing and incredible. Pastor Furtick is another one of those guys that doesn’t seem like he is trying, yet he can convey passion about watching an ice cube in such a way that you never thought possible all through the power of Christ in his life and his love for seeing people hear the gospel and come to know the saving grace of Christ. I was teary-eyed during the last half of his message and again, he wasn’t even in the building!

Can a guy like Noble or Furtick cause things to be stirred up here in Sacramento through video preaching? I think they could. As Revolution Church Sacramento takes shape and launches next year, we are looking to connect with a younger generation for Saturday and/or Sunday evening service. Mostly singles and young couples. However, could we partner with a great visionary preacher like a Pastor Noble or Pastor Furtick (or a Craig Groeschel or Ed Young, Jr. or…) and provide a gathering for families on Sunday mornings and see the kingdom grow even more? Could being missional and putting our faith into practice and sharing the love of Christ with the world be the glue that binds us together, even though we have two different worship styles, with two different meeting times, and two different demographics? I’m beginning to think we could. I’m feeling like the work that needs to be done here in Sacramento is far greater than what I could do even on my best days, and that partnering with another ministry with someone that can lead the way through their preaching and teaching while we work to connect people into service could honor God hugely. Who says that multiple services on a weekend must be the same exact message with the same exact preacher every time?

Maybe this is just another one of those dreams too big for the moment or my abilities. Could be that my mind is wandering and this isn’t what my thoughts should be on these days. However, I just can’t help but feel like this is worth some prayer and discussion and seeing what God would have me do here. My preaching doesn’t really translate well to video, but I’ve seen others with the gift for it and know that it’s being used to make a big impact on people in awesome ways. Just consider me more than a little intrigued at this point.

I invite your prayers and thoughts on this.

From a strictly personal perspective, I wanted to share a little of my story. After reading a post from Daniel’s Random Platypus blog: “Why are Asian American church leaders so obsessed with multi-ethnic church?” I feel like the debate over multi-cultural or multi-ethnic churches is somewhat divisive in itself. So, I wanted to clarify a little bit. Apparently there is a perception that Asian-American church leaders have their own personal baggage and that is a motivating factor to the desire for multi-cultural, ethnically-diverse churches. The actual reasons that Daniel lists in his blog are:

1. Theology and hermeneutics
2. Ethnic church baggage
3. Identity issues

The only one I can even relate to here is theology, but only in a subcontext (used to confirm my position, but not the motivating factor for my position). For me the reason is simple. I live (and feel called to plant a church) in a community that is incredibly diverse. Here are the demographics for Rancho Cordova, CA from wikipedia:

As of the census^[7] of 2007, there were 59,060 people, 20,407 households, and 13,550 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 2,445.4 people per square mile (944.0/km²). There were 21,584 housing units at an average density of 958.6/sq mi (370.1/km²). The racial makeup of the CDP was 66.66% White, 11.34% African American, 0.95% Native American, 8.24% Asian, 0.54% Pacific Islander, 5.72% from other races, and 6.54% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 12.90% of the population.

With only 66% of the population being Caucasian (note: this does not take into account immigrant groups like first generation Russian/Slavik/European people which have prominent neighborhoods within the community) it means that there are 34% of the people that are not. A portion of the other ethnic groups worship in segregated churches (African-American, Korean-American, Mexican-American), yet most of the second generation people of these ethnic groups do not worship anywhere. They just don’t feel like they fit in anywhere. With this much diversity, there is no single church within the city limits that I can think of that reaches out to all people effectively (not a criticism, merely an observation). Without exception (that I can think of it at this moment) there is no church in the community that has a white senior pastor and also has someone of color on the pastoral staff. Same is true for the churches of African-American congregants with a black senior pastor will not have a Caucasian or Asian pastor on that same staff. In essence, the white church remains white, the black church remains black, etc.

It’s interesting to note that as I sometimes enjoy eating Asian foods that I prepare, when I go to the local Asian supermarket, there are mostly Mexican men putting out produce and stocking shelves and that the majority of the patrons are Russian or Eastern European. No matter what day or time it seems to be like this. It used to be exclusively Korean cashiers, but these days there is a Russian girl, Indian girl, Korean guy, etc. The grocery store reflects ethnic and cultural diversity, yet I can’t think of one existing church that does.

What this breaks down to is this: It’s not about being multi-cultural per se, it’s about being a gathering of people from diverse backgrounds all living and working in community with each other, all welcome to worship or seek the Lord in His church. I don’t want to be known as the Japanese-American pastor that crossed cultural lines to develop a multi-cultural ministry. I want to be known as someone that has a heart and a calling to minister the gospel to a specific community with a missional mindset and action behind our faith. I want to be able to make my experiences and testimony relevant to someone that is hurting and far away from the Lord whether they are black, brown, mocha, yellow, pink, creamy banana smoothy, hazelnut cream or whatever skin color. I want to be able to speak to people in a loving and caring way regardless of whether they lost a job, got turned down at the college of their choice, can’t make ends meet financially, etc. because I’ve experienced all aspects of life with highs and lows. I want to be relevant to those outside of the church because I was outside of the church for the first 37 years of my life and most of the questions they have about God, religion, or church are the same ones I had and I am not better than they are because I profess faith in Christ and they do not.

You see, it’s not about some mission to reach every cultural and ethnic group in my community because segregated ministry is inherently evil. I’m not searching for some better way because I can’t relate to the ethno-centic church I was raised in or because I’m not “white” enough for Caucasians, yet not “yellow” enough for Asians. So, I have to disagree with the suggestions within Daniel’s post and argue against anyone that believes there is some underlying baggage that must be causing my desire to be outside of the Asian-American church.

In the end, if I am faithful to the calling I believe God put on my heart and this is the community I am supposed to minister to, then I am not in control of who the Lord sends and I cannot manipulate who I want to connect with us. If our church is 95% Asian in 3 years, so be it. If it ends up being 95% African-American, so be it. However, if it ends up being 66.66% white, 11.34& African-American, 8.24% Asian, and 12.9% Latin/Hispanic then I’m going to feel pretty confirmed in the vision I feel came from the Lord and I won’t refer to it as some multi-cultural formula, but instead it will truly be a church of the city. As I mentioned in Part 2, I don’t want to be viewed as a Japanese pastor leading a multi-cultural church, I instead want to be known as a visionary leader, faithful to God, His people, and His Word doing my small part to see the kingdom of heaven reign on earth with God getting all the glory and transformed lives promoting the love of Christ for all to see. This is my journey.

Another post by Craig Groeschel on the Swerve blog calls pastors to preach the gospel every time. In his “10 ways to Make Your Spiritual Invitation Stronger” post, he lists these action steps:

1. Truly believe in the power of the gospel to change lives.
2. Recognize that not everyone is saved (including some people who have been members of your church for years).
3. Hate sin. Explain repentance. Preach Christ.
4. Don’t promise a better life. Promise a better eternity and the Holy Spirit to lead you through this life.
5. Preach as if this is someone’s only chance to hear about Christ. It might be.
6. Present the gospel in every message.
7. Call for a decision.
8. Trust that the Holy Spirit has already been at work in someone’s life.
9. Believe people will be saved.
10. Worship God when they are.

Isn’t it amazing that this is a call to pastors? Seriously, shouldn’t we all get this before we accept a call to preach? Well, we should, but we don’t always do this. In particular, I have been to services where decisions are never given. The messages are delivered specifically to those that believe in Christ already. Same with the gospel message. Many services have messages based on scripture on how to be a good parent or good steward of your finances or give money when times are tough to be blessed, yet they never touch on the gospel of Christ’s saving grace.

Another important point here is that I think a lot of pastors don’t really consider that they may have only one chance to connect with someone. God is infinite and he may use several people to call on someone to be saved, yet the road may stop with you. You may be the last hope of seeing someone come to know Christ. Is that reflected in your preaching?

One of the advantages of starting in youth ministry is relating to the statistic that 70% of teens that have been part of a church will leave and never come back once they go to college. That is 7 out of 10 students that will walk away from their faith and choose the world over the kingdom of heaven. If I know time is short, then I know I have take advantage of every opportunity. In the end, I am not perfect and I have failed at times. If I truly believe the gospel has the power to change lives, I must preach it every time for the sake of seeing one more person experience transformation through the power of the Holy Spirit.

If we can’t confirm through our own examples from the pulpit that the gospel as has the power to transform lives and that we trust the Holy Spirit has moved before us to soften hearts, how can we expect those in the seats to believe it and live it? Doesn’t the world deserve our best effort to preach the gospel and Christ crucified every time we speak? Are we to be agents of change in revolutionary ways to spread the love and gospel of Christ or should we resort to messages of having better lives for ourselves without repentance and belief that the gospel saves?

This is my act of obedience I must live by and hope that there is still time to see more lives eternally affected through the kingdom of heaven. Romans 1:16-17 will be on my devotional list this week and thanks (as always) to Pastor Craig Groeschel for challenging me and helping to strengthen my faith and ministry! May my ministry come to reflect what God put in my heart every Sunday, rather than what will cause people to like me or consider me to be a better preaching pastor. The transformation must start with me.